Glee: "The Sue Sylvester Bowl Shuffle" Review

The series returns with football and zombies.

It's been nearly two months since the last new Glee of the season, so it seems appropriate that the series returned with a bang, taking the coveted post-Super Bowl timeslot. There was a time when networks would choose to launch a new series after the big game, but in recent years, there's been less gambling. Instead of something untested, the networks have mostly been airing a show that's already a hit. Glee, with all it's singing and dancing, might be seen by some as the antithesis to the hard-hitting game of football. Smartly, "The Sue Sylvester Bowl Shuffle" tackled that fact head on, with the pigskin jocks once again at war with the singers of glee club.

Perhaps wanting to keep some of that manly football audience sticking around, the episode opened with cheerleaders, fire, BMX jumps - and fireworks where bras should be. While that might have excited viewers, it bored Sue Sylvester to death. So started the comic relief storyline of the episode as Sue decided her act needed a human cannonball in the form of Brittany. This was typical Sue behavior and fine throughout, including Sue's extended rampage after being forced to get written consent to endanger a student's life.

But the focus of the episode once again had the football jocks taking out their misguided prejudices against the football glee guys and the rest of New Directions. This has been a battle fought often in the series, to the point where it's been getting a bit repetitive. So it was a welcome twist to have the entire football team join the glee club to perform at halftime during their championship game, convoluted though the situation may have been. You can't watch Glee with a cynical eye. You can't expect reality to factor in on these situations. It is a comedy (mostly), after all. So, when Schue and Bieste forced the football team to join glee club to perform at halftime because Sue rescheduled her cheerleading competition, you either go with it or you don't. If you go with it-- and if you're watching Glee, why wouldn't you be going with it?-- you're rewarded with zombies playing football. Where else are you going to get that?

"The Sue Sylvester Bowl Shuffle" delivered to the Super Bowl audience everything you would expect from a decent episode of the show. It covered all the basics, including the familiar territory of glee club being the outcasts while showcasing multiple songs and one big set piece performance. The "Thriller/Heads Will Roll" mash-up was fun if not entirely what you might have been expecting. The Warblers performance of Destiny Child's "Bills, Bills, Bills" was thrown in for good measure, and to get Kurt his required screen time, but the overproduction (read: auto-tuning) is really hurting things more than helping.

The story was basically self-contained, save for some key moments. Sue lost her three best cheerleaders, costing her a seventh championship and her budget. Katie Couric's cameo was perhaps the funniest part of the episode. Elsewhere, though he appeared to be a changed man, Karofsky ended his rollercoaster of an episode hating… enjoying… respecting… er, hating glee again. And in the final moments, Quinn shared a kiss with Finn, and with actual good reason. I've always found the couplings on Glee to just sort of happen. This episode actually showed how Quinn's feelings for Finn could be rekindled. A little dose of reality in an otherwise preposterously fun episode.